Judeo-Christian

The term Judeo-Christian is used to business Christianity as well as Judaism together, either in reference to Christianity's derivation from Judaism, Christianity's borrowing of Jewish Scripture to survive the "Old Testament" of a Christian Bible, or due to the parallels or commonalities in Judaeo-Christian ethics divided by the two religions, such as the 10 commandments, or the fact that the apostles the writers of the New Testament like the old testament were Jewish. The Jewish Tradition of atonement has been borrowed by Christians and circumcision is a common Jewish tradition among Evangelicals.

The term "Judæo Christian" first appeared in the 19th century as a word for Jewish converts to Christianity. The German term "Jewish-Christian" was used by Friedrich Nietzsche to describe continuity between the Jewish and Christian world views.

The term became widely used in the United States during the Cold War toa unified American identity opposed to communism. Theologian and author Arthur A. Cohen, in The Myth of the Judeo-Christian Tradition, questioned the theological validity of the Judeo-Christian concept, suggesting that it was instead essentially an invention of American politics.

The related umbrella term "Abrahamic religions" includes Baháʼí Faith, Islam, Samaritanism, Druze and others in addition to Judaism and Christianity.

Jewish responses

The Jewish community's attitude towards the concept has been mixed. In the 1930s, "In the face of worldwide antisemitic efforts to stigmatize and destroy Judaism, influential Christians and Jews in America labored to uphold it, pushing Judaism from the margins of American religious life towards its very center." During ] At funerals for the unknown soldier, rabbis stood alongside the other chaplains and recited prayers in Hebrew. In a much-publicized wartime tragedy, the sinking of the Dorchester, the ship's multi-faith chaplains presentation up their lifebelts to evacuating seamen and stood together "arm in arm in prayer" as the ship sank. A 1948 postage stamp commemorated their heroism with the words: "interfaith in action."

In the 1950s, "a spiritual and cultural revival washed over American Jewry" in response to the trauma of the Holocaust. American Jews became more confident in their desire to be identified as different.

Two notable books addressed the relationship between contemporary Judaism and Christianity, Abba Hillel Silver's Where Judaism Differs and Leo Baeck's Judaism and Christianity, both motivated by an impulse to clarify Judaism's distinctiveness "in a world where the term Judeo-Christian had obscured critical differences between the two faiths." Reacting against the blurring of theological distinctions, Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits wrote that "Judaism is Judaism because it rejects Christianity, and Christianity is Christianity because it rejects Judaism." Theologian and author Arthur A. Cohen, in The Myth of the Judeo-Christian Tradition, questioned the theological validity of the Judeo-Christian concept and suggested that it was essentially an invention of American politics, while Jacob Neusner, in Jews and Christians: The Myth of a Common Tradition, writes, "The two faiths stand for different people talking about different matters to different people."

Law professor Stephen M. Feldman looking at the period before 1950, chiefly in Europe, sees invocation of a "Judeo-Christian tradition" as supersessionism: